Hi readers,
It's great to have you on the forum! If you'd like to, write something below about yourself or how you connect with the philosophy and social movement of effective altruism.
To start us off, I'm a junior doctor from Melbourne, with a particular interest in tweaking the impact of emerging technologies so they better serve humanity.
Ryan
I'm Peter. I work as a data scientist at Avant Credit, a non-profit providing online loans to people with near-prime credit ratings. This job helps me earn-to-give, but more valuably it provides a lot of opportunity for learning, to enhance my career prospects later.
When not doing my day job, I work on .impact, a distributed volunteer force of effective altruists working on really useful projects. Recently, this has lead me to collaborate a lot with ACE, where I'm researching the impact of Facebook ads on diet change, and Charity Science, where I'm helping scale up the Birthday Charity fundraisers you guys may have been seeing around a lot (p.s. you should do one).
Hi, I'm Jess. I'm currently living in Oxford and doing a PhD in Behavioural Science - I'm looking at ways of making people more willing to consider evidence that conflicts with their existing views, and more likely to change their minds about important topics. I want to figure out how people can be more open-minded and truth-seeking, basically :)
I got involved in effective altruism after I finished my degree at Oxford, and came across 80,000 Hours. I'd always wanted to make a difference in the world, but was feeling a bit disillusioned about how to do it and unsure how this really fitted with my skills and interests. I ended up spending a year working for 80k - mostly designing and running the careers advising process - whilst learning more about effective altruism and thinking about what to do with my life. I'm still figuring a lot of this out!
I blog at www.jesswhittlestone.com and have written a number of EA-related posts for the 80,000 Hours blog.
I'm a programmer at Google, and I've been earning to give since 2009. I write about EA sometimes; some favorite posts:
I also help organize EA meetups, so let me know if you're going to be in Boston!
I'm Kerry. I'm currently in the last year of a PhD program in philosophy, specializing in ethics and I work for the Centre for Effective Altruism on effective altruism outreach.
Previously I spent 3 years at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation where I ran the technology and innovation department. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to influence foundations to give more effectively and how to improve the functioning of the nonprofit marketplace. I'm currently thinking about a number of hard problems in how to ensure that the EA movement is the last social movement the world ever needs.
I'm Bernadette. Originally from Australia, I'm a medical doctor, training in Infectious Diseases. I'm currently on a break from clinical work to if a research fellowship and DPhil in the genetics of bloodstream infections with Staphylococcus aureus (a worldwide disease). I'm also currently on a break from my research fellowship to care for my baby daughter. I now live in Oxford with my husband Toby.
My interest in doing more good by giving, and the role we could all play in ending global poverty was kindled after reading One World by Peter Singer in 2002. Since I graduated in 2005 I've been giving at least 10% of my income and in 2009 I made the GWWC pledge.
Hi all. I'm a sophomore mechanical engineering student, planning on earning to give in either energy (nuclear or petroleum) or aerospace, depending on how the job market looks when I finish my master's/PHD. I've always considered myself a utilitarian, so it was really a relief when I found EA and realized that I could actually do as much good as possible, rather than constantly coming up with justifications as to why it couldn't work since no one else was doing it.
Right now I'm focused on getting through college, though I have been donating a percentage of my summer income for signaling and habit forming reasons. I haven't had a chance to do the deep research necessary to figure out where I stand on animal and far future considerations (philosophy isn't exactly my strong suit), so I'm currently giving to 80,000 Hours as a compromise, since it acts as a donation multiplier toward pretty much every field.
I'm pretty new to EA (about a year now), and I'm still trying to figure out what I can do besides earning to give.
In my spare time I enjoy outdoor activities like climbing and backpacking for cheap and healthy recreation.
Hi, I'm Erica. I'm a New York nanny (so obviously not EtG :P), and I lean towards poverty reduction and animal activism. I got into EA through the LW/CFAR route, and am relatively active in those communities.
Other interests include: many various styles of dance, self-improvent, community organizing, board games, and trying new things. I recently joined the choir for the local Sunday Assembly, which is an organization that I highly recommend as a welcoming community of people who are into applying reasoning to things, AND doing good.
Hi all, I wasn't sure whether to use my real name here, but paranoia and probably having a bigger online presence with this one anyway won over. Anyway, I'm Sasha Cooper, currently self-studying programming after recently having completed a UK bootcamp, looking for an E2G coding role.
I'm an unrepentant scalar totalising hedonistic utilitarian, formerly an admin on Felicifia. Focus-wise, I lean towards movement building at the moment, then developing-world health. I'm an AI-risk and cause-prioritisation sceptic, though I take the possibility that either could be the best approach seriously.
Hi, I'm a CS student who is planning on earning to give. John Maxwell and I recently started a business (http://www.mealsquares.com) in order to try to improve on the default situation of software developer salaries. We figure we can accomplish several things with the entrepreneur route:
Give pretax dollars instead of post-tax salary dollars. (and hopefully more of them of course)
Spend more spare time working on effective things, for example helping out other EAs lower frictional costs that prevent them from being maximally effective.
Encourage the creation of other EA startups. We think there is some low hanging fruit in this space. (post on this forthcoming)
John and I are both highly interested in X-risk mitigation, which seems to suffer from a tragedy of the commons coordination problem.
Hola everyone. I'm Marcus. I'm an audio engineer but I really got into philosophy during college. Eventually that led me to ethics and effective altruism.
I'm currently learning a more financially beneficial skill so I can earn to give. In the meantime, I intend to do everything I can outside of that to contribute and help spread the word of EA.
Hi all! I'm David Perry, living in Durham NC. I just recently began the NC Effective Altruists meetup.
Also, this week I started an intensive code school for Ruby on Rails. I hope to eventually either work directly on software needed for EA-related causes, or Earn to Give more than I was in my previous job.
Howdy! I'm a senior in college studying neuroscience. Right now, I'm in the midst of management consulting interviews and might also go to law school or graduate school (likely in neuroscience or economics). I'm mainly interested in building career capital right now, but would guess that most of my life's impact will come from building high-impact communities and public influence.
I decided I wanted to "do the most good" when I was about 13, and happened to Google "greatest happiness rule" one day, which led me to utilitarianism, which led me to Felicifia.org. The rest is history!
I also agree with Michael Dickens that helping nonhuman animals seems like the area where most of us can have the most impact.
Hi everyone! I'm a student at Stanford studying math and computer science. I got into utilitarianism a few years ago, and started thinking about how to apply utilitarian philosophy to life. This led me to the effective altruist community.
I currently plan on doing earning to give, either by programming, working in finance, or starting a startup. I typically donate to ACE-recommended charities--helping non-human animals is a hugely neglected area and I think that's where we can have the biggest impact.
Hi all! I’m Michelle. Usually I run Giving What We Can. Right now I’m on sabbatical to finish my PhD. It’s on how to extend QALYs/DALYs to questions involving creating lives as well as extending/improving them, and it has to be finished in two weeks time!
When I was at school I wanted to help charities, but never really got committed to one because I just didn’t know which it would be best to support. I was lucky enough to come across Will and Toby as they were setting up Giving What We Can, and through them the idea that you could do research to find which charities were the most effective. I was so excited to finally feel like I whole heartedly supported particular charities, knowing the good they did, and I was fascinated by all the information available on different charitable interventions.
My favourite part of working for Giving What We Can is how many lovely people I get to meet, chat to and work with. I’m ceaselessly impressed by how many people there are who care so much about others, and act on that in such a considered way. Being part of this community gives me the tools, support and inspiration to help others way more than I ever thought I could.
I'm Ryan. I'm currently a Grounds Maintenance worker in Albany, NY. I've recently been motivated to Earn to Give and am using 80,000 Hours' resources for ideas on a career switch.
I'm a former Philosophy student dropout and I was introduced to Effective Altruism through Peter Singer's Life You Can Save last year. Since then I've been donating what I can to effective charities and eating Veganaise.
Other interests: hiking, kayaking, sound design, podcasts, comedy, climate change and green wizardry.
Hi! I'm a postdoc in philosophy at London School of Economics, mainly specializing in epistemology, broadly construed. I'm particularly interested in how we can use social media, online rating systems, internet tests, and various other internet applications to further efficiency, rationality and altruism. Here's my blog, where I'm discussing these matters.
Hello, I'm Toby. I've been involved with effective altruism since 2005 when I started putting together the ideas behind Giving What We Can. I co-founded Giving What We Can in 2009 and the Centre for Effective Altruism in 2011. I'm currently the president of the former and a trustee of the latter. I am a Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. I work on global poverty, global health, global priority setting, and existential risk. This involves academic research as well as policy work with governments, NGOs, and foundations....
Hi, I'm Claire. I'm a master's student at Stanford, and I also work at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. I research climate engineering (manipulating the world's climate to reduce the effects of climate change and otherwise make Earth more habitable). I'd really like to go into government work and this year I'll be thinking and possibly blogging about what EA policy-making might look like.
I used to write a lot, and I'm interested in how fiction can be used to spur activism and reshape ethical frameworks, especially in young people. I'm also cur...
Hi, I'm Josh. I'm a sophomore in college and I'm tentatively planning on EtG through programming. I have been donating to CEA for movement-building purposes, but may switch to ACE and/or ACE-recommended charities in the near future. I became an EA after being heavily exposed to moral philosophy (esp. utilitarianism) through doing debate in high school.
When I'm not doing school work I enjoy playing video games, reading philosophy, working out, and programming.
Hi, I'm Owen. I work for the Centre for Effective Altruism, planning and doing research for the Global Priorities Project into how we should choose between diverse options.
I joined Giving What We Can in 2009 while I was doing a PhD in pure mathematics. Later as a postdoc I thought more seriously about whether that was the area where the world most needed more research, and concluded that it wasn't. I still teach at the university.
Hi all
This is a copy paste of my Gratipay account. I suggest others look into creating Gratipay accounts of their own, both for donating to other EAs and to receive donations as EAs.
I am making the world better by dedicating 70% of my time to EA. My History *
I gave the first TED talk about Effective Altruism
Directed in the last two years a NGO that promotes Effective Altruism and Transhumanism in Brazil: www.IERFH.org
Wrote a book on how to think about impatcful philosophy of mind, as Dennett does
I've written articles, and blog posts on topics ranging fr...
I'm Kaj. I'm currently doing my Computer Science MSc at the University of Helsinki. Currently I'm focusing on my thesis, which is on the topic of educational games and involves me trying to develop a game to teach Bayesian reasoning. I'm also helping get EA Finland on its feet.
I've previously dabbled in a bunch of things that were broadly EA in spirit. I was one of the co-founders of the Finnish Pirate Party at a time when it looked like it could improve the state of the country's legislation with relative little effort, and later on spent a year working f...
Hi! I'm Jørgen (or George for English speakers who find the ø difficult) and I study industrial engineering at the Norwegian University for Technology and Natural Sciences (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway.
About 9 months ago I gathered a few classmates and we founded [Effektiv Altruisme NTNU] (www.facebook.no/ea.ntnu) as the first EA organisation in Norway. In just these few months we have had great success in building the organisation, networking and planning our [launch event] (www.facebook.com/events/1464757957116665) this Thursday. We have already third mos...
Hello, I'm Evan.
What I'm concerned about
Global health and poverty reduction are important causes. I believe the accessible example they provide as a staple of effective altruism makes the case for it to continue being a concern for this movement. Additionally, I'm sympathetic to it because it offers a more solid, more risk-avers
I'm Daniel. I'm a first-year student who is studying economics and planning on earning to give through a career in finance. While at college, I will hopefully set up an EA group.
I got into EA through Peter Singer and 80000hours. I've considered utilitarianism correct for a long time, but I've only found about EA recently.
I'm mainly concerned about existential risk; recently I've been thinking about Pascal's Mugging and the prospect of displacing humanity with an utilitronium-like AGI.
I am DIFFO Frédéric, ph.D student on comparative littérature in université d'Artois. I am in the fourth year research. My topic base on immigration and representation of alterity in some selected subsaharian and maghrebian novels. My supervisor is Anne Gaelle Weber. My research laboratry is "texte et culture"
I'm Julia. I live in Boston with my husband, Jeff Kaufman, and our daughter. I'm a social worker doing mental health work for prisoners.
Since childhood, I've been interested in richer people's obligations to poorer people. I took the Giving What We Can pledge in 2012. I'm thrilled that the EA movement is a thing, both because I'm no longer the only person I know talking about this stuff, and because other people have helped me think more clearly about it. I write the blog Giving Gladly.
Hi! I'm James. I'm a software engineer living in London. I first got into EA via Givewell and Peter Singer. I am looking for ways to tailor my own giving towards the most effective means. I also am constantly trying to think of new ways to effect large-scale change, through technology and awareness. I currently work for a payments company and am trying to formulate ways to seamlessly build charity into commerce on a massive scale.
Hello everyone,
I'm Joey I have worked and volunteered for a ton of different EA organizations (80k, ACE, GWWC, THINK, Leverage) and now have founded one (Charity Science) that works on moving money to the most effective and evidence based charities (GiveWell recommendations).
Hello, I'm Andrew. I'm currently a third year PPE student at the University of Manchester in the UK. I was introduced to EA through Less Wrong, and became actively involved a bit less than a year ago when a friend in Manchester started up a local chapter. I have taken the GWWC pledge and am currently torn between going into academic philosophy (which I would probably enjoy a lot, but may not be terribly effective due to the number of EAs already involved in academia), learning to program and getting a job in software, or getting involved in a think tank in order to advocate for open borders.
In my spare time I enjoy playing the piano, reading, and running while listening to podcasts.
I'm Jon. Working on a degree in computer science, and trying to figure out what I can do besides earning to give. Basically just spending my time/energy figuring out how to study harder/better so I can get a better-paying job when the time comes.
I'm considering using National Novel Writing Month to try fundraising for SCI, but I'm not sure how well I'd be able to pull it off without having any friends.
Hi all, I'm Alex Gordon-Brown. I'm from the UK, and currently live and work in London. I started work at Jane Street Capital in September 2013.
The focus of my career is Earning To Give, and as a result I spend a lot of my free time thinking about questions of where and how to donate. I'm always happy to chat to others undertaking or considering EtG, especially those looking at finance.
I'm a physics PhD student working in quantum computing. My introduction to EA has been through Lesswrong, where I'm reasonably active (under a different name).
When I first heard about EA, it immediately struck a chord with me, as it did two things: (1) it pinpointed exactly what it was about your average charity that annoyed me so much; and (2) proposed a way to fix it.
I very recently started donating a small amount, $50, monthly to GiveDirectly.
While I support giving from what you earn, I'm still quite on the fence about earning to give. That is, I'm n...
I am Fréderic DIFFO, Ph.D student in the université d'Artois. I am doing francophone comparative literature and my supervisor is professor Anne Gaelle Weber and my research laboratry is name " texte et culture". My research topic is based on immigration and representation of alterity in some selected subsaharian and maghrebian novels. The aim of my thesis is to show that the way that characters representing otherness through immigration in francophone novels depends on their fondamental cultural et ideological memory. I working on six novels and the author
...Hi! I'm John. I am co-president of Harvard's effective altruism student group for undergrads. I currently study physics and math, and I do research in economic theory; I'm planning to transition to economics after I graduate in May, eventually going to grad. school and likely doing research long-term.
In the past, I've spent a lot of time thinking about meta-ethics and movement building. I have two years of experience running Harvard's group, and am super happy to talk to other students / movement-builders. Currently, I'm most excited about rethinking some ...
I'm Alasdair, I work as a paralegal/legal trainee in London in public interest law and I am a Giving What We Can member.
My interest in EA stemmed from two things. First re-reading much of the less wrong archives and being interested but sceptical about a lot of the things discussed on that site. Second, a growing recognition in my study of human rights law of how little a lot of "activism" actually helps people.
My other interests include getting slightly less terrible at Go (15kyu), and trying to become a more well rounded person. I'm particula...
I'm Dale. Originally from western Pennsylvania, I studied at a small liberal arts college before going to work in New York. I became interested in effective altruism largely from ready Toby Ord's writings: he has some really interesting papers. I've also read a lot of lesswrong.
I've recently started a blog where I write about a mixture of economics and effective altruism.
People here seem nice so I look forward to discussing altruism with you all!
Hello, I'm David and I'm from Munich, Germany. I reveived a Diploma (German old-school master equivalent) in mathematics and finance. After that I worked a couple of years as a research and teaching associate in finance at university. I've done research on the intersection of decision theory (exotic preferences under ambiguity aversion) and financial equilibrium theory (heterogeneous agents in financial markets) Unfortunately, it turned out very recently that the core of my Ph.D thesis, a theoretical model, is not solvable in closed-form. Since my contract...
I'm a London based IT Consultant and Software Developer, having read Doing Good Better over the summer I realise that I've been roughly Earning to Give for a number of years. I'm here to soak up other people's ideas and float some of my own.
My one-man consultancy company Do Right Digital has been running for almost 3 years, we've always given 10% of turnover to charity. From May we're considering "giving Wednesdays to charity" - any money made on a Wednesday is ring fenced for charity. This would help to communicate the Earning to Give model as well as bridging the gap between the average working week and our (mainly) annual giving.
I'm Gina, I'm a volunteer & board member for an animal rights & environmental protection organization in Madison, WI (Alliance for Animals and the Environment). I think promoting vegetarian/veganism is one of the best ways to reduce suffering in the world, since animal lives can be saved much more cheaply than human lives (and I don't think that they're worth hundreds of times less).
I work as a software & applications engineer for a small company that does hyperspectral imaging.
I'm Max and I'm from Vancouver, Canada. I am interested in far future causes and animal causes. I think that in terms of improving near term well being, animal causes dominate in expectation, but I am still unsure whether they have strong enough long run effects or if more specifically far future causes would be better.
I'm finishing up a philosophy BA right now and I am still trying to decide what to do after. It seems like my comparative advantage is definitely in philosophy or something else that uses verbal reasoning, but I'm not sure if the options are...
Hello, I'm Evan.
What I'm concerned about
Global health and poverty reduction are important causes. I believe the accessible example they provide as a staple of effective altruism makes the case for it to continue being a concern for this movement. Additionally, I'm sympathetic to it because it offers a more solid, more risk-averse way of doing good, despite the fact that some may claim that it doesn't bear out as high a value from expected value calculations to other causes.
For developing countries to gain greater sovereignty/agency, to grow more economically, and to become self-sustaining seems very important. The charities that effective altruists have endorsed thus far have been doing a good job of that, but I believe even more could be done. I hope effective altruism has a future in creating such organizations, or aiding them towards greater effectiveness.
I currently believe there is some natural basis to consciousness, that it exists on a gradient, and that the sentience and capacity to feel pain and pleasure of non-human animals matters. I believe this is true for most species of vertebrates, and a few species of invertebrates. I contend it's possible that perhaps most species of invertebrates are sentient enough to warrant human concern, but I believe the jury is still out on this. To this end, I believe concern for wild-animal suffering, factory farming, and other exploitation by humans of other species is warranted.
There is a dearth of worthy research for effectiveness and impact evaluations into animal advocacy, but I would like to see this happen. To this end, I endorse the work of organizations such as Animal Charity Evaluators, Charity Science, and Farm Sanctuary.
As of this comment, I am not a vegetarian of any sort, but I do avoid eating eggs, and I heavily reduce my intake of meat. The "Logic of the Larder" argument seems plausible to me, but not sound given the current treatment of most non-human animals by us. In addition to the suffering it causes, I believe factory farming also poses risks to human public health, and to the environment. To these ends, phasing out factory farming among human civilizations is worthwhile goal.
I'm concerned for future generations, but I'm concerned because mitigating existential risk seems intractable, or at least it seems too difficult to tell (currently) about how much of an impact we would be making. Nonetheless, I believe future generations do matter, and investigations into mitigating existential risk should continue. I don't currently have a framework for discounting lives at one point in time to another.
I would like to observe among think tanks dedicated towards mitigating global catastrophic risk, e.g., the MIRI, the FHI, and the GCRI, more research dedicated to risks other than those posed by unsafe machine intelligence, in particular engineered pandemics, and other threats to global civilization. I'm aware that the capacity of these organizations to focus more effort on these other causes is contingent upon them receiving more, and greater, funding in the future, and I hope they receive it.
I believe cause prioritization may be among the most important causes to be focusing upon right now, and to this end I endorse the following projects: The Global Priorities Project (jointly operated by the Future of Humanity Institute, and the Centre for Effective Altruism), and the Open Philanthropy Project (jointly run by Givewell and Good Ventures).
At the 2014 Effective Altruism Summit, during his keynote address, Holden Karnofsky, executive director of Givewell, mentioned how he believes effective altruism has too early and broadly narrowed to a only a few cause areas. I concur effective altruism should attempt to evaluate the impact, and potential for doing good, in a wider array of cause areas. This is one of my primary concerns for cause prioritization. I believe labor mobility, open science, global catastrophic risk reduction, and other policy advocacy hold lots of promise.
Outside of earning to give, and careers typical of non-profit work, I believe more effective altruists should take it upon themselves to find more unconventionally impactful jobs and projects to work on.
Thanks for the detailed introduction Evan. Any of those bullet points would make interesting openings for discussion on an open thread (or could be elaborated into a post).